Propane?

[Notebook]

Originally Posted by Limecc

Not so fast.
The pressure will equalize and it was always good getting some free LPG when filling up the empty car tanks, but these systems need a liquid take-off which then goes to an evaporator before injection as gas (single point or sequential). To get the liquid to transfer you either need a pump or let gravity do the work which could be a long time depending on the bore of the pipe. Have to carefully weigh the receiving vessel to make sure not over 80% full to allow for temperature expansion. Refilling not recommended!

I have a couple of 10kg Safefill bottles and it can be a real problem finding somewhere, they sooner sell you exchange Calor, more profit.

Thanks
I am aware of there being more to it - just a thought - can be achieved or assisted with one tank being warm and the other being cold I read

Thanks

[Matt]

I researched lehr a while back. Not great reviews. For bigger stuff, Charles Burnett tried to run the old merc V6s on propane to set some records. Blew up an awful lot of engines!

So it is doable I think, but needs to be done right.

[jeffstevens763@g]

Originally Posted by Matt

I researched lehr a while back. Not great reviews. For bigger stuff, Charles Burnett tried to run the old merc V6s on propane to set some records. Blew up an awful lot of engines!

So it is doable I think, but needs to be done right.

My thoughts are if propane was any good car manufacturers wouldn’t be pushing electric OMO

[TmMorris]

Originally Posted by jeffstevens763@g

My thoughts are if propane was any good car manufacturers wouldn’t be pushing electric OMO

It's pretty much a byproduct of the distillation of oil for petrol so there isn't that much produced to fuel a great number of cars. Add in the costs of building engines and tanks to use it and for companies that need to make millions of cars it never really added up.

I think the main issue for outboards is the lack of ubiquity. You're never much more than a few miles from petrol but if you need to buy a tank of propane it's a bit of a hunt which just makes it unappealing.

[jeffstevens763@g]

Originally Posted by TmMorris

It's pretty much a byproduct of the distillation of oil for petrol so there isn't that much produced to fuel a great number of cars. Add in the costs of building engines and tanks to use it and for companies that need to make millions of cars it never really added up.

I think the main issue for outboards is the lack of ubiquity. You're never much more than a few miles from petrol but if you need to buy a tank of propane it's a bit of a hunt which just makes it unappealing.

That was my point earlier Tim the infrastructure wasn’t there years ago for cars boats don’t stand a chance OMO

[Mattster]

Originally Posted by jeffstevens763@g

My thoughts are if propane was any good car manufacturers wouldn’t be pushing electric OMO

It never really caught on over here (UK) for some reason, but it was quite popular in Australia when I lived there (a while ago now) - as far as I recall, pretty much all taxis ran on LPG. It was quite a bit cheaper than petrol, but it is still a fossil fuel with something like 70% the CO2 emissions of petrol - much better on particulates tho I think.

[Pikey Dave]

Originally Posted by Mattster

It never really caught on over here (UK) for some reason, but it was quite popular in Australia when I lived there (a while ago now) - as far as I recall, pretty much all taxis ran on LPG. It was quite a bit cheaper than petrol, but it is still a fossil fuel with something like 70% the CO2 emissions of petrol - much better on particulates tho I think.

It’s a moot point, the OP has moved on & gone trolling fishing for a different species.

2 Stroke can of worms - judge Judy
https://www.rib.net/forum/f36/2-stroke-can-of-worms-judge-judy-87127.html#post843911

He just needs to start a hole drilling thread & he’ll have a full house.

[Notebook]

Originally Posted by Pikey Dave

It’s a moot point, the OP has moved on & gone trolling fishing for a different species.

2 Stroke can of worms - judge Judy
https://www.rib.net/forum/showthread.php?p=843911

He just needs to start a hole drilling thread & he’ll have a full house.

Still here - still learning from some

[TmMorris]

Originally Posted by Mattster

It never really caught on over here (UK) for some reason, but it was quite popular in Australia when I lived there (a while ago now) - as far as I recall, pretty much all taxis ran on LPG. It was quite a bit cheaper than petrol, but it is still a fossil fuel with something like 70% the CO2 emissions of petrol - much better on particulates tho I think.

Yup. LPG is quite a bit cleaner, primarily due to much fewer particulates as well as CO2.

Australia adopted it for cars and for a while Ford and Holden built LPG cars locally because the geography of the country meant that it already had in situs an efficient propane distribution network as so many rural properties are off grid and LPG has been used for years to power these homes. It was also much cheaper than petrol due to not carrying any transport related taxes.

Fast forward to today and it's disappearing rapidly. Neither Ford or Holden make LPG cars any longer and they barely make any cars domestically as the market is just too small to comfortably make them cheaper locally than they can be imported for. The govt has also been adding transport tax to LPG so it's lost a lot of its price advantage and rural properties are being encouraged to come off propane and switch to renewable electric such as solar. At the same time, the distribution network is no longer being renewed by the fuel companies as the market is rapidly contracting with the intent to phase it out altogether.

In the UK, we never had that off grid demand for LPG so never created a distribution network beyond some big red bottles being driven to a house once a year. Our off grid solution was coal and when we began phasing that out we were such a small island that it was easy to run power cables to almost all off grid homes and put them on the grid. We've never had a big propane distribution network for that reason. What we did have was some domestically produced LPG as a byproduct of petrol refining and during the 90s we started selling it at specific, typically rural, petrol stations where petrol cars doing high mileages could take advantage of the price and run cleaner but this was effectively killed off by the arrival of the efficient turbo Diesel engine and its favourable taxation. That in turn is now being replaced by electric.

[Notebook]

Originally Posted by TmMorris

Yup. LPG is quite a bit cleaner, primarily due to much fewer particulates as well as CO2.

Australia adopted it for cars and for a while Ford and Holden built LPG cars locally because the geography of the country meant that it already had in situs an efficient propane distribution network as so many rural properties are off grid and LPG has been used for years to power these homes. It was also much cheaper than petrol due to not carrying any transport related taxes.

Fast forward to today and it's disappearing rapidly. Neither Ford or Holden make LPG cars any longer and they barely make any cars domestically as the market is just too small to comfortably make them cheaper locally than they can be imported for. The govt has also been adding transport tax to LPG so it's lost a lot of its price advantage and rural properties are being encouraged to come off propane and switch to renewable electric such as solar. At the same time, the distribution network is no longer being renewed by the fuel companies as the market is rapidly contracting with the intent to phase it out altogether.

In the UK, we never had that off grid demand for LPG so never created a distribution network beyond some big red bottles being driven to a house once a year. Our off grid solution was coal and when we began phasing that out we were such a small island that it was easy to run power cables to almost all off grid homes and put them on the grid. We've never had a big propane distribution network for that reason. What we did have was some domestically produced LPG as a byproduct of petrol refining and during the 90s we started selling it at specific, typically rural, petrol stations where petrol cars doing high mileages could take advantage of the price and run cleaner but this was effectively killed off by the arrival of the efficient turbo Diesel engine and its favourable taxation. That in turn is now being replaced by electric.

We are heading for nuclear outboards - lol - plutonium-fueled, sodium-cooled ones

[Maximus]

Originally Posted by Notebook

Anyone running a propane outboard?

FFS does this forum dig em up or what?

What about swamp Gas??....or Methane?

[Steve509926]

Originally Posted by Maximus

FFS does this forum dig em up or what?

What about swamp Gas??....or Methane?

Methane now there's an idea, got a pig farm just down the road. Now how do I get it in a bottle?

[paintman]

For those that use LPG in cars bear in mind that as of Oct 2020 Shell garages have stopped doing it altogether.
I've done the Leicester to Cornwall run for many years on LPG and used to use the Shell just off the M5 at J17 (Bristol) and then top-up at Shell Carland Cross (St Austell).
Other garages still do it but it's just less common.

[Pikey Dave]

Originally Posted by paintman

For those that use LPG in cars bear in mind that as of Oct 2020 Shell garages have stopped doing it altogether.
I've done the Leicester to Cornwall run for many years on LPG and used to use the Shell just off the M5 at J17 (Bristol) and then top-up at Shell Carland Cross (St Austell).
Other garages still do it but it's just less common.

Our local Shell garage has retained its LPG pump & is now branded as Flogas.

[Notebook]

Thanks

[Matt]

The problem with propane in boats vs cars is a tricky one.

You have a vaporiser that converst the liquid propane to a gas and ensures that you get propane gas to the engine, not liquid. On a car, this is OK, since you rarely run flat out for mile after mile, so the vaporiser doesn't freeze and all is OK.

But on a boat, the problem was always freezing the vaporiser - you're mostly running a boat under quite a high duty cycle and the vaporiser can't keep up - converting the liquid to gas causes the vaporiser to eventually freeze over. Charles Burnett blew up a lot of 2.5 V6 outboard motors trying to set some world records learning this IIRC.

So for a harbour launch or similar displacement hull where you're chugging along - could probably make it work fine.
But for something where you're requiring quite a lot of propane - it's hard to stop the vaporiser freezing.

In a closed cooling motor, I guess you could use some of the coolant to heat the vaporiser, I did wonder if you could develop a liquid propane injection system rather than gas, or all sorts of other possibilities to stop the vaporiser freezing.

No idea if anyone ever did though - probably too small a market to be worth the investment really - and I'm not sure what Lehr's answer to it was.

[Notebook]

Originally Posted by Matt

The problem with propane in boats vs cars is a tricky one.

You have a vaporiser that converst the liquid propane to a gas and ensures that you get propane gas to the engine, not liquid. On a car, this is OK, since you rarely run flat out for mile after mile, so the vaporiser doesn't freeze and all is OK.

But on a boat, the problem was always freezing the vaporiser - you're mostly running a boat under quite a high duty cycle and the vaporiser can't keep up - converting the liquid to gas causes the vaporiser to eventually freeze over. Charles Burnett blew up a lot of 2.5 V6 outboard motors trying to set some world records learning this IIRC.

So for a harbour launch or similar displacement hull where you're chugging along - could probably make it work fine.
But for something where you're requiring quite a lot of propane - it's hard to stop the vaporiser freezing.

In a closed cooling motor, I guess you could use some of the coolant to heat the vaporiser, I did wonder if you could develop a liquid propane injection system rather than gas, or all sorts of other possibilities to stop the vaporiser freezing.

No idea if anyone ever did though - probably too small a market to be worth the investment really - and I'm not sure what Lehr's answer to it was.

Thanks
It was a tohatsu 5hp I was looking at.

[Matt]

Absolutey - and if was an off the shelf outboard from Tohatsu - Tohatsu make good motors, I'd be comfortable they've solved the vaporiser problem.

I seriously considered a 5hp Lehr motor as my aux - but when I read the reviews, decided to stay conventional.

[Notebook]

All the bad reviews have been about lehr

[jeffstevens763@g]

Originally Posted by Steve509926

Methane now there's an idea, got a pig farm just down the road. Now how do I get it in a bottle?

Methane or coal gas in the days of the gas omitor before natural gas we have now